"A collection of short stories is generally thought to be a horrendous clinker; an enforced courtesy for the elderly writer who wants to display the trophies of his youth, along with his trout flies."

“I sometimes go back to walk through the ghostly remains of Sutton Place where the rude, new buildings stand squarely in one another’s river views.”

“I do not understand the capricious lewdness of the sleeping mind.”

“Homesickness is nothing … Fifty percent of the people in the world are homesick all the time.”

“One would never have guessed that the world had such a capacity for genuine grief. The most we can do is exploit our memories of his excellence.”

“All literary men are Red Sox fans—to be a Yankee fan in a literate society is to endanger your life.”

“My veins are filled, once a week with a Neapolitan carpet cleaner distilled from the Adriatic and I am as bald as an egg. However I still get around and am mean to cats.”